A Few Words on Kenya from an American Passport

It is hard to tell of my relationship with Kenya without talking of its culture. It is difficult to relate to its joys without inherently giving warning. It is messy, it is intertwined, it is unclear and jumbled together; it is a day of my life, and it is real life. It is cross-cultural, it is simultaneously simple and mysterious, safe and dangerous, comfortable and familiar. It is home.

How am I supposed to go about explaining the nuances that stand out like red on green, the small things that seem to fit so perfectly, but give need to adjust your position? The stone houses with tiled roofs, barred windows, banana trees, and water tanks all fit; they make sense in a more clear way than row after row of wood and stucco houses, with high ceilings and hidden piping, heating, and water. In Kenya the systems are as simple as looking: You can see where the water heater is mounted on top of the house, you can see where the pipes run down the side and enter to the kitchen, you can see where the sewage runs out and into the city system; you can see. But the endless rows of plaster homes that take a month to build, you can’t. There is no way to see how the water gets hot, nothing telling the common observer what happens when you flush the toilet.

I think this may be what I have learned the most, and also the greatest difference between the two cultures. In Kenya and most of East Africa, the culture is very open. There isn’t fear of observing someone else’s life, and everyone lives with their lives observed. But it isn’t intrusive, people don’t look to be malicious, they just look because it’s open. You don’t need roadsigns pointing the way because the way is clear. You don’t need a thick web of telecommunications because it’s easy to find one another. Instructions to turn left at the big tree make sense, because there are only a few places to turn left and only one big tree. It’s easy to see, your vision is as large as the horizon.

The roads match the lifestyle. It’s bumpy and it’s slow. It isn’t boring by any dimension of the word; there is always something that demands or intrigues your focus: The herd of cows blocking the road or the distant herd of Grant’s Gazelle leaping through the savanna grasses. The bumps and ruts and general lack of “road” slows you down and makes the journey thrice as long as it may seem to need, but it isn’t a bad slow. Transportation is an integrated joy and part of the culture, and so much of who the people are is reflected through it. There isn’t the annoyance found on American roads, because getting from point A to point B isn’t viewed as an annoyance as it seems to be here. Its part of the visit, its part of the being that makes life the exciting and slow pace it is. It makes life open. You wave to the shosho sitting by her hut, you observe to feed store’s most recent sale as they load it onto a lorrey, you watch the kids kick around a tightly wrapped jumble of plastic bags as though it were a soccerball. But as you wave to the old woman you dodge a pothole that would swallow a horse; and as you watch the workers load a big truck you weave through three others, one which is tipped over on its side in the roadway; and as you watch the children play in the grass beside to road you avoid two donkey carts overloaded the produce and get passed by three matatus. It’s all a part of your visit to the supermarket, or of your trip to the game park.

And it is so relational. Every fiber of the social, economic, and environmental cloth is woven with thick threads of relational importance. The weakness this creates is catastrophic in the mind of a Westerner as it almost virtually annihilates “equal opportunity” employment, and it cripples financial transparency due to the responsibility to your family and tribe. Its all about who you know, but it doesn’t even stop there: its all about who you greet on the street, or who you have over for chai, or how long you stop and visit. Simply knowing isn’t enough, you must be their friend. But it isn’t difficult to be friendly, everyone is and everyone expects you to be their friend.

There are very few cultural formalities, but the ones that exist are based on how to relate to people. The way you greet someone is most important, but it isn’t even what you say that makes it important. It’s the attitude. If you are hasty or uninterested in their lives, the conversation will go poorly because you’ve already offended them. Everything that happens does so because the most important cog to turn the wheel of Kenyan culture is the interest given to the people you are relating to. Work always comes second to relationship. It’s not about units produced as it is so much about relationships built and maintained. It is a slightly off-kilter idea to an American, and has historically caused a lot of damage between the two cultures although the Westerners are always invited back, simply because our pockets are so full of money. But there have also been excellent relationships built; the Americans learn the importance of relationships and the Kenyans learn the importance of scheduling and financial responsibility. It can be a great relationship between the cultures if each is willing to learn from the other. And I think it’s easier for Kenyans because they are so familiar with Westerners now. Its been over a hundred years since their country was colonized, but there are so many Westerners who have never taken the time to visit their culture whether for lack of interest or money, I don’t know.

The final thing I would perhaps give warning of is the food, and the culture around food. To be honest, there is very little culture tied to food. Some tribes must feed you if you come to visit, some are very hesitant to be hospitable in that manner. But what is most important is just being with the people, eating or not. If food is on the way, most Kenyan food can be –and historically has been—eaten with fingers as opposed to utensils. And it is very starchy! Lots of potatoes and cabbage and sukumo wiki and maize meal. It is good in its own bland way. It is certainly filling! And since everything is so open, it is fun sometimes just to sit there and watch as they stir a large pot of stew over a little fire that we would consider just embers and ashes. There is no pretense of something that isn’t there, if they are accustomed to fixing food in a certain way they will continue to do so regardless of who is present. But it is so interesting to be able to see that even though Kenya is one nation, it is made up of 38 tribes. And it is so fascinating to see the different mannerisms the tribes have towards food, even though they all seem to eat very much the same food.

And the same is true for how the approach all parts of life. Looking in from the outside it may seem that every Kenya regardless of tribe or social level or place of living will act and respond the same way to another individual, but as you get into Life you begin to see more and more mannerism that are so specific to a place or a people that it always leaves just that much of life spicy and unknown.